Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-7)

Gain a Comprehensive View of Patient Health

Assess, monitor, and plan treatments for patients with symptoms of anxiety, all in one platform.

Simplify Administrative Processes

Offer the GAD-7 questionnaire in clinic or remotely through the Creyos Health platform, with efficient automated scoring.

Track Patient Health Over Time

Benchmark and continuously evaluate symptoms with a centralized patient health record that includes longitudinal data.

Get a Full Picture of Patients’ Cognitive and Mental Health

Healthcare providers can use the Creyos digitized GAD-7 questionnaire to support the assessment and treatment of anxiety disorders—plus other mental health questionnaires and cognitive tasks for a full picture of brain health.

Review our guide below for a complete list of standardized questionnaires available in Creyos.

Preview the Creyos GAD-7 Sample Report

The Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-7) offered through Creyos is a seven-question self-assessment that measures the presence and severity of anxiety symptoms over time. It offers patients and clinicians:

Reliability and validity, backed by extensive research [1]
Automated scoring and reporting for easy administration
Flexibility to conduct in person or remotely

How to Use the GAD-7

Step 1: Help Patients Prepare

Communicate the purpose of the GAD-7 questionnaire: to provide insights into symptoms of anxiety.

Step 2: Administer Questionnaire

For in-clinic patients, launch the GAD-7 in Creyos and hand the device to the patient to complete the questionnaire. For at-home administration, send the link to the patient to complete remotely.

Step 3: Access Automatic Results

Access the patient’s results, which are automatically scored in the Creyos platform, and review the findings together.

Step 4: Treat and Reassess

Put together an action plan based on the patient’s results, and reassess easily and often using a combination of cognitive tasks and questionnaires in the Creyos Health platform.

Frequently asked questions

What is generalized anxiety disorder?

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a mental and behavioral disorder characterized by excessive and uncontrollable anxiety and worry.

How is anxiety related to cognition?

Research is also finding key associations in clinical contexts. For example, Nicol et al al. (2019) found that brain tumour survivors report lower subjective cognitive function, and GAD-7 scores uniquely account for a significant percentage of that impairment. This study highlighting the complex interplay between direct brain trauma, subjective cognitive complaints, and anxiety.

Another study (Getaneh, Ballard, & Brooker, 2020) found that both anxiety (GAD-7) and depression (PHQ-9) scores were associated with decline in an executive function task among older adults. Healthcare providers must consider multiple mental health metrics when explaining or treating disruptions to cognitive functioning.

What is the GAD-7?

The GAD-7 is a screening tool used to measure generalized anxiety disorder symptoms. It is commonly used in many healthcare and research contexts where anxiety can be involved in a diagnosis or as a key outcome measure.

The GAD-7 was developed to overcome issues with traditional anxiety measures, such as taking too long and requiring in-person administration, by streamlining the process with a 7-question, self-administered assessment that is quick and easy to complete.

Where did the GAD-7 come from?

The GAD-7 questionnaire was developed by Drs. Robert L. Spitzer, Janet B.W. Williams, and Kurt Kroenke, et al., with an educational grant from Pfizer to enable timely, accessible self-assessment of anxiety symptoms.

How reliable is the GAD-7?

Research has shown the GAD-7 is small but mighty. As a screening tool, it has strong psychometric properties, despite taking very little time. In a recent paper, Johnson et al. (2019) administered the GAD-7 to a variety of psychiatric patients, and found that it has excellent reliability and validity. It can also be used easily with primary care patients.

When used with a cutoff score of 8 for the purposes of screening or diagnosis of anxiety disorders, it also has good sensitivity and specificity. Furthermore, scores were responsive to changes due to treatments, even in this study's diverse sample.

Who uses the GAD-7 questionnaire?

Primary care and mental health providers will often measure anxiety as part of screening, an initial patient interview, and/or to monitor treatment progress. Practitioners who treat anxiety disorders will find a direct use for the GAD-7, providing evidence that treatment is on the right track.

How is the GAD-7 scored?

Patients are prompted with the following question: “Over the last 2 weeks, how often have you been bothered by the following problems?” They then respond to seven questions on a scale of 0 (“Not at all”) to 3 (“Nearly every day”). The total number is calculated to assess the severity of anxiety symptoms. In Creyos Health, scores of 5, 10, and 15 are used as cutoffs to indicate mild, moderate, or severe anxiety.

How does administration and scoring of the GAD-7 work in Creyos?

When a patient completes the GAD-7 questionnaire, providers get immediate insights through easy-to-read reports that combine questionnaire data with cognitive test results for a full picture of patient brain health. Creyos can also use APIs to integrate with a variety of electronic health systems (EHR) and has a built-in integration with athenahealth. Our platform automatically collects, scores, and organizes results from each questionnaire and adds them to the patient’s EHR.

What symptoms does the GAD-7 evaluate?

The GAD-7 questionnaire measures symptoms of anxiety, including: feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge; inability to stop or control worrying; worrying too much about different things; trouble relaxing; difficulty staying still; becoming easily annoyed or irritable; and feeling as though something awful might happen.

How can the GAD-7 support patients?

The GAD-7 questionnaire should be used as a screening tool to assist primary care providers or mental health professionals in quantifying symptoms of generalized anxiety and monitoring symptom severity over time. Any conclusions drawn from the GAD-7 should be paired with further assessment, such as clinical interviews and observations, additional mental health examinations or assessments, and evaluations of the patient’s level of distress, functional impairment, and/or family history.

What can the GAD-7 not do?

While a score of eight or higher is strongly correlated with a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder, the GAD-7 questionnaire is not a diagnostic tool on its own. It is a multipurpose tool for screening, identifying, monitoring, and measuring the presence and severity of anxiety symptoms over time.